Eight years and four albums into its career, the Florida pop-punk troupe Mayday Parade wanted to make gradual rather than major changes on its new “Monsters in the Closet.”

“The main goal for us these days is just to make an album that we are happy with and that we love, first and foremost,” says frontman Derek Sanders. “We try not to overthink it too much. We didn’t consciously make an effort to change anything, necessarily; we never had that conversation. We just went in and tried to write the best song we could and to make the best album we can.”

That said, Sanders, 27, thinks that “Monsters” has “some things I think are different or changed. We tried to push our music a little bit, expand our music a bit.” The writing process, he says, was more collaborative between the five members rather than dominated by just Sanders and drummer Jake Bundrick; guitarist Brook Betts, in fact, is responsible for the blues tinge on the ballad “Hold Onto Me.”

Fans seem to like it, at least. “Monsters” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 earlier this month, Mayday Parade’s best showing yet.

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“We don’t worry about the numbers too much either way,” Sanders says. “As long as people are into it and want us to keep playing music, we’ll enjoy doing it. But it was pretty wild to see that after all these years, eight years of being this band, there’s still a gradual progression upwards. We haven’t seen it plateau or drop off yet, which you’d kind of expect. So we’re stoked it’s gone that way.”